“Look around. I’m becoming one of the ‘old-timers’ in chamber work,” said a smiling Jean Hales.
Being the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce’s president and chief executive since 2001 is only her latest role in the world of chambers of commerce. A deeply dedicated family person, Hales also has dedicated herself to serving the business community in a variety of cities.
“Friends led me to it when I lived in Wyoming, saying I should be in chamber work. Later, when I moved here, I contacted George Duff at the Seattle chamber and talked about it. But life goes on and nothing happened until I met Everett businessman Gary Meisner. He was active in the Everett chamber and urged me to get involved,” she recalled.
After being introduced to chamber President Tom Burns, Hales began doing some part-time work on the ForEverett downtown revitalization project in 1990 and managing grant applications. It was “heavy part-time work,” she said, an experience that taught her there usually is no such thing as part-time work for a chamber once you get involved.
Soon she was fully immersed, taking on the directorship of membership services, supervising communications staff and developing newsletters, directories and news releases.
Her background was a great fit for chamber of commerce work, she said, including her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Utah, work with Custom Software Services in Bellevue as marketing coordinator, market researcher at the Small Business Center in Everett, office manager at Norrell Temporary Services in Seattle and an instructor at Everett Community College, where she created a pilot program for training dislocated workers in basic computer skills.
By 1994, she had become vice president of the chamber, managing operations with an emphasis on using technology, directing the staff and establishing partnerships with businesses and the community.
“That’s really what made me leave my other work. I found I was so disconnected with my community, and I’d always had that in Wyoming,” she said. “But with the chamber, that’s what it’s all about, being connected with your community.”
In 2000, she finally left the chamber to start her own business, Artisans Well Inc. in Lynnwood, featuring a fine-crafts gallery and gifts. But her own business enterprise wasn’t destined to last. The next year, she accepted an offer to become the head of the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce.
Overnight, life became even busier than before. Administration, strategic planning, financial management, communications, public relations and human resource management, all things that were engrained in her mind and spirit, once again became the fabric of her life.
“It’s exciting for me, as a person who needs to always be learning, to work with the chamber and economic development issues, accomplishing things with really diverse groups of people,” she said.
But her family and her own interests also are woven into that fabric. She said she finds time for all of those personal things. It’s just harder sometimes with so much responsibility. But she tries to manage it well and breaks away when she feels the need.
“I really enjoy being a grandmother,” she said with a wide grin. “We get together fairly regularly as a family, which includes my husband, Arne; two grown children, Shelby and Brett; their spouses; and our two grandchildren, Siena, 3, and Sydney, 8 months, both Shelby’s.”
Since she lives in the Picnic Point area between Edmonds and Mukilteo, and her children reside in Lynnwood and north Seattle, schedules rather than distance separate them. Still, going for walks, just spending time together and last summer’s family vacation trip to Montana all are part of that family time she loves, she said.
Even with sparse time for personal interests, she finds some moments to relax with needlepoint and “a lot of crafts,” plus indulging her passion for reading. She’s fascinated by historical novels such as Catherine of Aragon as well as Thomas Friedman’s top-selling view of global technology changes, “The World Is Flat.”
“When Arne and I travel, we bring along books on tape but fun stuff, nothing heavy,” she said. “A road trip is not the time for self-help tapes. Favorite trips include going back to Wyoming, where I was born, although I grew up in Salt Lake City.”
Another memorable experience was a Caribbean cruise with 21 of their friends and neighbors from the community they’ve lived in for more than 20 years.
“We tend to keep our close friends for a long time, including those from Wyoming,” she said. “Both Arne and I come from large families. I’m the oldest of five, and he’s in the middle of six siblings. That’s another reason we value family.”
Expressing her creative side in her personal life means designing things on her computer, including greeting cards and photo albums, which she likes to call “scrapbooking by computer.” One of her recent projects was producing an album of memories from her son’s wedding.
“I’m always busy. I always have more than one project going at a time. That’s another reason that I love my Palm Treo cell phone and PDA,” she said. “I’ve worn out two Palms already. I’ve used them since they came out. I’ve always enjoyed computers, but the Palm was the first time I really used technology to save time. It was a big improvement over carrying around a Day-Timer.”
Although working on complex community and economic issues with diverse groups of people is challenging and even stressful at times, along with maintaining her fast-paced personal life, overall, she considers herself a positive person.
“Life throws you a lot of challenges, and you always have to make choices. Sometimes I have to catch my breath first and then I say, ‘OK, how do we make this into a positive situation and keep moving on?’ You just focus on your goals and take the positive from everything that comes along,” she said.
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